Fish Theory

While playing poker the other day I came to think about the amount of fish on my pokersite. Now, I have played at Stars for the past year or so, and as that is all I have experienced I just figured that that was the standard quality of play.

However, since moving to a smaller Euro site I have found the play to be so much weaker. I can not convey how much weaker the play is. I mean as an example, last night I had a guy donk min betting every flop. This was after he limp called preflop every hand. And it's not like this is an isolated incident. I just never saw players that bad on Stars.

On pokerstars you regularly see 6-7 regs on a 9-handed table, and they are all playing 8 or 16 or 24 tables. However, on the smaller euro sites, it is not possible to mass multi table simple because the traffic isn't good enough. Originally, when I was thinking about changing from Stars, I was immediately turned away from the smaller rooms beause I wouldn't be able to play 16 tables. And I think that a tonne of regs are turned away from sites that dont allow to play a tonne of tables. This is why I believe the small euro sites have a ridiculously huge ratio of fish:regs. I can still 8-table 6-max on my site and grind out a good winrate without having to play regs all day.

That's what I've been thinking about lately so feel free to offer your opinions.

You definitely right about that. A lot of regs prefer the main sites because they offer a good vip program and the possibility to massively multitable as well as guaranteed traffic at almost anytime of the day on most limits and type of game. However a good winrate is > than most other thing.

This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by gadget51: 15.06.2011 17:38.

Micro-Cash games on small sites are extremely profitable if you don't want/need to play 40 000 tales at once. I find the maximum possible on my site of 10 is quite enough and the play is as described by OP, where he average Players on FLop % is often >40.
Unfortunately there is much less action if you are a 'higher limit' player (>NL100)

But the smaller the site the higher the rake it evens out more then most people think. For example the nl25 players on party are worse then stars and stars has far more regulars (more on this later). Theres something like 6% winning players on party with decent sample size. The higher the limit the more winning regs. I would say nl25 has like 2% winning players. I see more breakeven russian mssers that I can only describe as bots then winners. I am one of if not the biggest winner at party this year with 500k hands. Yet there are probly 50-100 star grinders at the same limit that have me crushed(maybe not that many).

Theres two main differences I can think of. Party has off the top of my head from the ptr article I read awile back 33% more rake. That alone is like what? 2bb/100? im not sure thats a estimate but its huge.

The second is table selection. When I grind which isint usually peak hours I PLAY EVERY TABLE AT PARTY NL25. Thats sh and fr obviously I avoid the jackpot tables there unbeatable at nl25. Where as star grinders have 60+? tables to choose from and from my experience way way less ssers. The average Party sh nl25 table looks like this. Two breakeven russian mssers that play every table. One breakeven reg, a donkey and a small loser. Long term your not making much off the mssers and your playing them at every table so thats 20% of your villians killing your winrate.

So is there truth to what im saying or am I making excuses for a smaller winrate then top star grinders? im not sure but thats my 2 cents

Originally posted by thazar
You definitely right about that. A lot of regs prefer the main sites because they offer a good vip program and the possibility to massively multitable as well as guaranteed traffic at almost anytime of the day on most limits and type of game. However a good winrate is > than most other thing.

Originally posted by Targetme
But the smaller the site the higher the rake it evens out more then most people think. For example the nl25 players on party are worse then stars and stars has far more regulars (more on this later). Theres something like 6% winning players on party with decent sample size. The higher the limit the more winning regs. I would say nl25 has like 2% winning players. I see more breakeven russian mssers that I can only describe as bots then winners. I am one of if not the biggest winner at party this year with 500k hands. Yet there are probly 50-100 star grinders at the same limit that have me crushed(maybe not that many).

Theres two main differences I can think of. Party has off the top of my head from the ptr article I read awile back 33% more rake. That alone is like what? 2bb/100? im not sure thats a estimate but its huge.

The second is table selection. When I grind which isint usually peak hours I PLAY EVERY TABLE AT PARTY NL25. Thats sh and fr obviously I avoid the jackpot tables there unbeatable at nl25. Where as star grinders have 60+? tables to choose from and from my experience way way less ssers. The average Party sh nl25 table looks like this. Two breakeven russian mssers that play every table. One breakeven reg, a donkey and a small loser. Long term your not making much off the mssers and your playing them at every table so thats 20% of your villians killing your winrate.

So is there truth to what im saying or am I making excuses for a smaller winrate then top star grinders? im not sure but thats my 2 cents

Originally posted by thazar
You definitely right about that. A lot of regs prefer the main sites because they offer a good vip program and the possibility to massively multitable as well as guaranteed traffic at almost anytime of the day on most limits and type of game. However a good winrate is > than most other thing.

I get more rakeback on party then I would on stars which is the only reason I play there its about same as ft. There was an article that party tables averaged 3.5$/100hands and stars was like 2.3 but that might have included jackpot tables